While most tech enthusiasts will know Xiaomi’s Black Shark brand from its line of gaming smartphones, the brand has recently tapped into other product sectors as well, including smart-enabled accessories. Since its arrival on the scene, Xiaomi has launched several Black Shark-branded products including a game controller, earbuds, and most recently a couple of smartwatches, the S1 and S1 Pro.
With regards to the latter, Xiaomi recently announced that it will be launching the Black Shark S1 Pro Smartwatch for global markets, meaning that brand loyalists and buyers after a wallet-friendly smart wearable have another option to look into. Going for a retail price of $69.99, the S1 Pro undercuts a lot of competing wearable products, but does the low price mean sacrificing specs? Let’s take a look.
External Design
Unsurprisingly, Xiaomi has designed the Black Shark S1 Pro with a rather rugged design, keeping with the “gamer” aesthetic of the rest of the brand’s product lineup. It’s a sharp contrast with the regular Black Shark S1 watch, which features a more conservative look overall, as opposed to the angular corners of the S1 Pro, which somewhat resembles one of those rugged G-Shock watches from Casio.
Available in Black and Blue variants, the S1 Pro features a 1.43-inch AMOLED display in front, as well as action buttons on the right-hand side for user operation and system navigation. Xiaomi says that the device is also “fully washable”, so it should be safe from most accidental splashes and light rain. All in all it goes more for function over form, which brings us to our next point of discussion.
Built-in Features
The Black Shark S1 Pro smartwatch comes with a rather impressive battery, and Xiaomi says that the device can last for up to 15 days on a single charge. To put this in perspective, it means that you’ll only have to charge the device once every two weeks, or twice a month. This puts most other smart wearables on the market to shame, although of course your experience may vary depending on how you use your device with factors like screen brightness, app usage, etc being different from user to user.
Interestingly, Xiaomi says that the S1 Pro comes with built-in support for Chat GPT, which we suppose is a nice addition and a more-than-capable substitute for an onboard smart assistant. It also features more than a hundred different sports modes, meaning that you can take the watch along for runs, workouts, and other physical activities. Additionally, the watch also supports “Gaming Health Monitoring Mode.” Other details include NFC, Bluetooth calling via a paired smartphone, and other usual add-ons such as constant heart rate monitoring and blood oxygen tracking.
Should You Get it?
For a price much lower than a hundred bucks, you’re definitely getting a lot for your money, and Xiaomi as well as Black Shark loyalists will find a lot to love here. The addition of Chat GPT is also a unique approach to smart wearable assistants, and should be interesting to see in the long run.
With that in mind though, you might want to check out other smart wearable devices such as new entries from Huawei and Mobvoi, which you can check out in the links below:
